Ultimately, however, it wasn’t about the questions he raised. It was about the answers he gave. “We have to be able to refute those who contradict because we see something poisonous here and if you believe this, you’re going to be blinded from what God wants you to see about him.”
Ongoing controversy over Rob Bell’s new book pressed four prominent Christian authors, professors, and theologians to urgently come together and hold a public conversation in regards to the divisive matter
Making their intentions clear, the panel affirmed that it was love – love for the people of God and even love for the author – that brought them there, desiring to preach a message where love truly wins.
“When we have a conversation like this, we’re really saying to the world, to the larger community of Christians,” said Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., “if anything we have said in the course of this conversation is in any way sub-biblical or in error or can be improved over how we’re saying it, we hope folks will love us enough to tell us.”
Troubled by the potential danger that Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, could have over the believing and unbelieving world, the Christian leaders reintroduced the central message of the gospel, the way Christ and his apostles taught it.
“The good news is infinitely better than this,” Mohler stated about Bell’s work.
Russell D. Moore, Dean of the School of Theology, also affirmed the concerns over Bell’s wrathless, unjust God, saying, “There’s no message of hope here. That’s the problem. You have people with consciences that are plagued and they do not have the message of the blood of Christ that John says cleanses us from all unrighteousness.”
The major premise of “Love Wins,” surmised by the panelists, was that God is love, not an angry being who punished people to an eternity in hell, and that he ultimately forgives everybody.
Simply speaking, God’s abounding love would forever keep open the gates of heaven, like putting in place a perpetual doorstop.
Mohler described the book as a “velvet hell,” where Bell “cushioned” the whole idea of eternal damnation.
“Even if you go to hell you can choose to come out of it,” explained Denny Burk, Dean of Boyce College, about the author’s concept of hell. “There is no final punitive retributive justice from God. [Bell] even says that… hell is a place of remediation, almost like a purgatory. He even says at one point that hell is not the wrath of God but it’s the correction of a loving father.”
“I think [Bell] believes he’s making Christianity safe for people to accept,” further expounded Moore. “He’s saying there’s a problem [that] people can’t receive the God that we talk about. [So] let’s remove what is offensive and scandalous so we can reach people [and] they can become Christians.”
By eliminating offensive and supposedly outdated doctrines, like the subject of hell and God’s wrath, Bell and many theological liberals believe that Christianity can be in a sense, saved.
But Justin Taylor, vice president of Editorial at Crossway and one of the first to comment publicly about Bell’s novel, asserted that this view of God was one-dimensional and fundamentally missed the gospel story.
“From Genesis to Revelation, it just misses the holiness of creator God, the sinfulness of the fall of man, the accomplishment of what Christ did, and what the final state will be.”
Contextualizing the God of the Scriptures, Mohler explained to the audience that God was not a god who was divisible into a righteous part, a just part or a merciful part, but rather infinite in all of his perfections.
Contrasted with Bell’s version of a God who was all love but no wrath, the theologians all agreed that God’s love could never be a singular entity. Instead, his infinite love always came hand in hand with his infinite justice and holiness.
“I don’t think you can find a place in the entire book where sin is an offense against God. It’s always more horizontal, more passive, a wandering away, not an infinite offense against an infinite God,” Taylor lamented.
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